Between the Lines
by cazflibs
Summary: Caught in a triangle of unrequited slashy love and uncertain het pairing, Rimmer, Lister and Kochanski get their angst on.


**A pre-slashy oneshot that follows on from my other slashy outings - _Breaking the Habit, No Happy Ending _and _Endless Night. _**

**Caught in a triangle of unrequited slashy love and uncertain het pairing, Rimmer, Lister and Kochanski get their angst on.**

**No likey the slash? No read. Thanks ^_^  
**

* * *

Kochanski was back. Oh fan-smegging-tastic.

Holly had picked up a lone SOS signal from _Blue Midget_ a couple of days back, and lo and behold, it was Little Miss Smartarse herself. Joy of joys.

Rimmer had honestly believed that Lister would have grown out of this infatuation - this childish crush on a woman way out of his league, and so different in personality it made Paul McCartney and Heather Mills look more compatible. But no, _of course_, it was yet another adventure he hadn't been privy to whilst he'd been 'swanning about' as Ace.

An alternative version of her had ousted him from his rightful place - both his seat in the cockpit, and the bunk below Lister's. Even after she'd taken _Blue Midget _and done a runner, did she honestly think she could wriggle her way back into Lister's affections as if she'd never been gone?

Rimmer swallowed awkwardly. Pot, kettle, black?

But with him and Lister it was different, surely? They had a _something_, a bond that had been woven between them, as fine yet strong as a spider's web, that no amount of logic in this cosmos could made sense of.

When he'd returned a couple of months previously, he'd thought their reunion would be just like the movies. But it wasn't. Lister had simply stared at him wordlessly, as if he didn't trust what his mouth would spurt forth if he opened it.

In fact, he'd been confused by Lister's fickle attitude towards him over the last few weeks - his eyes equally charged with beckoning and anger all in one sideways glance. And Rimmer knew the accusation that flickered silently behind his gaze.

But he'd come _back _for smeg's sake! The mask of Ace had been shed, the flame passed on to his nano self. Didn't he realise that he'd given it all up just for him? He'd rejected the fame and glory and attention it attracted just so that he could give it one more go. One more roll of the dice. One more attempt to just spit it out and confess to Lister what he'd been so desperate to say all those years ago when he'd left.

And part of him knew that he'd blown his one perfect chance during that drunken Poker Night a week ago. When a run in with a bottle of tequila, a broken swivel chair and an inebriated bet had landed them both in a most compromising position on the grated floor. He could see it in Lister's eyes what he was silently asking of him. But he'd merely stared back at him in equal expectation, too scared to make the first move. The hero had long departed. The coward had returned. And nothing had happened in its wake apart from a few mumbled apologies and a horrible awkward silence.

And now _she _was back. The beautiful butterfly had returned to bewitch him with her pretty colours whilst he remained cocooned in his sleeping bag next door, where the walls on this godforsaken ship were far too thin.

Their shared moans of passion were surely theatrical for his benefit, the perverted onlooker that he'd always been. A hologram in the company of the living, dancing on the edge of humanity; an echo of its image, but certainly not part of it.

And all he could do was listen from the wings, pretending oh so fervently that he were the protagonist, and not her. His mind ran rampant to fill in the gaps and _oh god _he was getting hard just thinking about it - caught up in a fantasy world that seemed hell bent on destroying him.

He clasped his hands to his face. His long, slender fingers tugged hard at the curls of his hair, the heels of his palms pressing against his eyes until red galaxies swirled in the darkness. And he lay there and listened, feeling angry, aroused and ashamed all in one hologrammatic breath.

* * *

Usually post-coital, Lister would fall into a sex coma so deep even the smell of Kryten's kippers vindaloo couldn't rouse him to the land of the living. But he'd found himself lying awake all night next to the warm body sleeping peacefully beside him.

He felt sick.

The two people he cared most for in the entire world had treated him like utter smeg. They'd wandered out of his life and strolled back in again, like his heart was supposed to be some revolving bloody door.

When Rimmer had left to become Ace, his world had shattered. He'd read so damn deeply into those snatched looks, those accidental brushes of one hand against the other, that he felt empty when that secret language of mutual affection had all been exposed as illusion. Or worse still, ignored.

But his loneliness had been short-lived when Kris had arrived. And although she'd rejected his advances, all the knock-backs had been conducted with such coyness and wordless encouragement that he'd felt spurred on. His life had new purpose now, he'd told himself. Even when that small, insistent voice would pipe up to tell him that he was purely distracting himself from the true object of his affections.

His increasing melancholy had driven her away, Lister realised that now. Yet despite Kryten's act of kindness in covering up her tracks, he could only help but wish that it had been Rimmer's departure that he'd spared him from. Not having to relive - day after day, night after night - that cold, sad goodbye in the corridor. Watching everything that could have been between them die and wither in that one farewell. Biting back tears as he turned and walked away as if he'd not seen any of it, yet clearly feeling the need to put hundreds of thousands of light years between them.

So understandably when Rimmer had returned, he didn't know what to feel. Part of him secretly hoped that he'd come back just to be reunited with him. Yet in the same breath he felt angry that he'd felt the need to leave in the first place; walking away from what seemed to him so very obvious.

And during that drunken moment at the end of Poker Night, when the pair had ended up in a tangled embrace on the floor, Lister had looked him straight in the eye. If this was it, if this was what Rimmer had truly wanted, then why had he simply stared back at him and done nothing? Those were the hazel eyes of either a startled crewmate or a cowardly liar. He was too scared to decipher which.

So when Kris had come back, showering him with love and affection and fervent, teary vows of _I'll never leave you again_,he'd instinctively clung to her like a drowning man to a life-ring.

But now it was all falling apart. Everything that had happened - the losses, the betrayal, the confusion - had eaten away at him inside over the years until he was hollow. And now the façade that was his empty shell, which slouched around _Starbug _with his trademark hamster grin, risked shattering; a destruction that could be brought about _oh so easily _by just one glance from him.

So when he joined Rimmer at the breakfast table the next morning, he didn't look at him. The silence between them burned far more painfully than the liberal sprinkling of Tabasco on his cornflakes was sure to.

* * *

Kris was alone when she woke up. She knew she would be.

Once a cuddly, affectionate and attentive lover, Dave had now seemed withdrawn and distracted, as if he were constantly on auto-pilot around her. She knew it wouldn't be straight-forward - returning after a year long absence when she realised that she so desperately craved the almost puppy-like love and attention he'd once showered upon her.

They'd clearly been trying to relive the glory days of their passionate fling back before the accident - where they'd make love with wonderful reckless abandon, and he would end up asleep within moments and snoring like an asthmatic rhino. But now it felt _different_.

Rimmer was back it seemed. Not the nano version she'd known from the Tank, but the original. The version Dave had confided to her back on _Starbug _that he'd missed terribly.

The Rimmer she'd got to know as a fellow prisoner had obviously had a crush on her. Sure, he'd been a bit of an uptight git at first, but he'd seemed to mellow out a fair bit over the years. Yet this incarnation seemed deeper and darker, his eyes continually flickering between fear and anger. As if he'd walked away from all sorts of unspeakable horrors as Ace to battle a far more frightening foe back here.

Always the popular girl at school, she hated being disliked, and this Rimmer's coldness towards her was just as apparent as Kryten's. It was clear as day as she sashayed into _Starbug's _open plan galley that overlooked the scanner table, where the two men now sat. Lister flashed her a theatrical Liverpudlian wink. Rimmer smiled thinly at her as if he were simultaneously trying to keep the bile rising in his throat.

She nodded wordlessly before turning her attentions towards making herself a mug of hot chocolate. Yet the back of her mind continued to flirt with the riddle that appeared to sit between the two men, as if it were a third guest at the breakfast table. _Something _that seemed to be glaringly obvious yet neither wanted to talk about.

As she swirled the spoon slowly through the froth, she watched silently as Rimmer's gaze flitted up from his Astronavigation book towards Lister. His meandering eyes moved almost possessively over Lister's hunched form, as if to reclaim lost territory before dropping to his text with a pained frown. Her heart skipped a beat. She knew that look. She'd _used _that look.

Her chest seemed to give a low moan as it bowed to the inevitable. She bit her lip hard as Dave's dark eyes lifted from his bowl to watch Rimmer read, blinking mournfully as if looking upon a life long lost before sinking back to his breakfast once more.

_Oh god._

The clatter of the spoon against the worktop snatched both men's attention. She stood frozen as they both stared expectantly at her.

"Sorry," she mumbled, grasping the mug so tightly she feared it may shatter. "I'll just be - erm - " she nodded hurriedly to the cockpit.

As the door hissed shut behind her, a shuddered sob escaped without permission.

And she knew, she _knew _in that instant that despite their outward differences, this Dave and her Dave were more alike in their sexuality than she'd hoped to discover. And she was frightened to the core that she was exposing herself to his rejection.

The mug began to burn the skin of her palms.

Again.

And so she kept silent as the days wore on, watching the missed, snatched glances continue between the two men. Hoping against hope that all three would keep up the pretence and not start to read between the lines.


End file.
